Thursday, November 13, 2008

Under the Radar Conference Preview: Hook Mobile| posted by David Lidsky

"Only about 25% of U.S. cell-phone customers have a data plan. So the mass of users generally can't access multimedia content on their phone without incurring unwanted fees. Hook Mobile is a platform that acts as a go-between for social media and content companies and the mobile carriers to open up MMS as a network to expand content consumption on phones. "Social media is where content is uploaded and shared," says Craig Dalton, Hook Mobile's VP of business development. "We're bringing that bite-sized content to MMS. Why limit the delivery of a sentiment to Facebook?"

Hook Mobile thinks it has a leg up because it's done all the hard work behind the scenes, and customers are already used to the idea of MMS through their avid use of SMS. "Nothing elicits a more definite response than when your phone beeps with a message," Dalton says. Hook Mobile handles intercarrier connectivity and billing, and it optimizes the photos, images, or audio for each user's phone bandwidth and screen dimensions.

Its challenge is finding the right customers to convince to use its service. For example, Paramount Studios is a client, delivering movie clips from its Facebook app, Voozoo Mobile, to any mobile phone."

I was given the opportunity to present at the Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA this week. It was a great opportunity to talk about the Hook Mobile platform to the start up community. UTR did a great job of getting wireless operators, VCs and content owners into the room which created a unique opportunity to get feedback. The presentation went well (although I wish I had 'paced' a little bit less). Jeff from CBS had some tough questions for me at the end, but after the session he told me they do want to find a way to work with us.

I enjoyed UTR very much as it brought together lots of different companies who look at mobile from different angles. My favs had to be Smule for shear entertainment value and Billing Revolution for providing a quick and efficient mobile billing option.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

The subject is SMS 2.0 which provides a good forum for discussion the current state of MMS (available and ready to go) and the reason why, historically, it hasn't been deployed as an offering by 3rd party content owners.

This kicks off a busy two weeks of presenting. As mentioned previously, I'll be presenting Hook Mobile at the Under the Radar conference on November 12th.